A CLOUD OF QUILT PATTERNS:AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PATTERN IN BLOG FORM UPDATES & ADDITIONS BY BARBARA BRACKMAN

Monday, July 17, 2017

Flying Swallows

BlockBase #3758

All the quilt photos are from online auctions.

Ruth Finley called this variation on a star block

Circling Swallows, Flying Swallows and Falling Star.

The pattern is hard to see. Here's a BlockBase/EQ7 drawing.

In her 1929 index to patterns, Finley wrote that the pattern dates from about 1800, a very dubious date. I don't have any pictures of the design earlier than the 1930s or '40s. Finley was probably responsible for popularizing it in the 1930s.

The Quilt Index has 8 examples that I could find, dating from the 1930s to the 1980s.